While doing the PA for Legion one night this week Joe Bell the Athletic Officer for Post 58 and I were sitting in the press box and he ask me if I knew Jimmy Hunter back when he Play for Post 102.
That started about a three inning barrage of Jimmy Hunter stories between announcing batters.
I became the Batboy for Post 102 back in 1961. My father a member of Post 102 drove some of the players to the first game of the season. It happened to be in Benson. While we were waiting for the players to dress Coach Al Vaughn asked me a skinny eight year old if I wanted to drag the bats. I had no idea what drag the bats meant and he replied “be the batboy”. That started a five year obsession for me because as an eight year old I thought I was a major leaguer being the batboy for Post 102.
Way back then if you played baseball in the Albemarle area and wanted to play baseball in the summer Ahoskie Post 102 was your only choice. So players came from Plymouth, Williamston, Edenton, Elizabeth City as well as Bertie and Gates County. As far back as I can remember Ahoskie was only average in baseball so there was hardly ever more than a player or two on the team who went to school in Ahoskie. Ahoskie was then and still now a football town.
Al Vaughn always had a try out in mid May which would consist of a Friday night practice and a Saturday morning practice and then he would pick the team. There might be thirty players there trying to make the team.
In 1962 there were four players who showed up from Perquimans High school. Gene Nixon, Freddie and Francis Coombs and Jimmy Hunter. My family took Freddie and Francis and they spent that Friday night at our house so they would not have to sleep on cots in the gym because of the early Morning Saturday practice. The 1962 Legion team lead by those four players lead Ahoskie to one of their best years ever.
1963 rolled around and Perquimans won the state 2-A baseball title on a Friday night. The Legion season had started the weekend before and Ahoskie was 0-4. The following night one day after winning the state baseball title the Perquimans foursome joined the Legion team and Ahoskie proceeded to win 16 games in a row and beat Rocky Mount the last night of the season to win the league and into the playoffs. To my knowledge that is the only regular season title Post 102 has ever won.
Post 102 made it all the way to the state finals. In those days we played Siler City and lost four games to two. There was no double elimination tournament like there is now.
During the Christmas break of 1963 Jimmy and his brother Pete (Pete was pitching for ECU at the time)were hunting and as they tried to cross a fence one of their shotguns fell and went off and nearly blew Jimmy’s right foot off. He was operated on at Norfolk General Hospital but he had so many shotgun pellets in his foot they could not get them all. He lost his right big toe in the accident.
After having lead Post 102 to the state championship series in 63 Jimmy Hunter was God like to people in Ahoskie. They will tell you today he is from Ahoskie.
Perquimans was in the process of heading back to the state high school championships in 1964 when they came to Ahoskie for a conference high school game. Now remember Jimmy just almost lost his foot in December and here it is April and he is on the mound pitching with no top to his right shoe they had bandages on it. That day Jimmy Hunter pitched a no hitter against Ahoskie before the largest crowd that I ever saw at any high school game there ever. After the last out the Ahoskie crowd gave him a standing ovation. Remember now we think he is one of us.
In May after the state championship game in Greensboro Jimmy Hunter signed a pro baseball contract with the Kansas City A’s. He left the very next day going to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester Minnesota where he under went another operation to remove more pellets from his foot. They got what they could but could not get all of them.
The next day the Coombs Brothers and Gene Nixon were back in Ahoskie playing Legion. The Coombs brother were headed to N C State where they would play a part in the only Wolfpack team ever to play in the college world series
Jimmy went to the Mayo Clinic he did not return for Legion ball in 64. So the last time that Jimmy ever pitched in Ahoskie was the high school game in which he threw a no hitter. His foot wrapped in bandages a missing big toe and about fifty pellets in his foot. Boy was that a game.
Jimmy Hunter was elected to the Baseball Hall Of Fame in 1986. Hunter won 224 games plus he was 9-5 in divisional playoff games and 5-3 in the World Series being on the winning team five times. Won twenty or more games five years in a row. Had 42 shutouts in 500 career starts. He pitched a perfect game in 1968. Had a career ERA of 3.29. Here is a real stat for you . In nine divisional playoff series and six World Series his ERA was 3.26. Talk about consistant. Won the Cy Young award in 1974
Just amagine what he could have done if he had a good right foot!
